Ruskin’s heirs: art, nature and socialism
At the end of the Victorian era, the great intellectual influence of John Ruskin convinced some young artists, intellectuals and activists like William Morris and Edward Carpenter to tightly link artistic and political commitments. The article presents the shapes and consequences of these links. Mor...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | English |
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Laboratoire d’Etudes et de Recherches sur le Monde Anglophone (LERMA)
2016-06-01
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| Series: | E-REA |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://journals.openedition.org/erea/5106 |
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| Summary: | At the end of the Victorian era, the great intellectual influence of John Ruskin convinced some young artists, intellectuals and activists like William Morris and Edward Carpenter to tightly link artistic and political commitments. The article presents the shapes and consequences of these links. Morris and Carpenter were led to socialism by a refusal of the industrial civilisation of their time, and particularly of its ugliness. But their commitment was at the same time traditional and peculiar—Morris conceiving socialism as a means to achieve a beauty-loving society, whereas Carpenter saw it as a sort of religion of mankind. Therefore, their political commitment was strongly shaped by their artistic ideals. Conversely, the political dimension of their thoughts had an impact on their artistic works: it somehow kept Carpenter off his first poetic enthusiasm, and led Morris to a painful artistic aporia. |
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| ISSN: | 1638-1718 |